What is going to be the best time to view the meteor shower tonight?
Stay up past midnight, grab a blanket and go stargazing tonight: The year’s most spectacular meteor shower is expected to peak Wednesday morning around 1 a.m. (your local time), and then again just before dawn. The Perseid meteor shower happens every year in August, when the Earth travels through a cloud of debris left by the periodic comet Swift-Tuttle, which last approached the Earth in 1992. Under optimal conditions, up to 80 shooting stars can be seen every hour, although how many you’ll see tonight depends on cloud cover, the brightness of the moon and the proximity of city lights. Sources: http://www.wired.
The annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks tonight, is poised to maintain its reputation for putting on a stellar show. “It is really easy to view the Perseids compared to other meteor showers. Just put on some mosquito repellant and go outside,” said Bill Cooke, a meteor-shower expert with the Space Environment Group at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. A nearly moon-free night and a predicted dense concentration of comet debris are combining to make this year’s Perseids even better than usual, several astronomers are reporting. Meteor showers occur when Earth orbits through trails of dust shed by comets on their repeated trips through the solar system. The tiny bits of debris, no larger than a grain of sand, light up when they strike Earth’s upper atmosphere. In the process, they create what are commonly referred to as shooting stars. The Perseid meteor shower officially peaks at 7 a.m. ET on Thursday, August 12 and astronomers say the best time to catch
